by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Extremists still scheming to spoil Northern Ireland's fragile peace can be beaten through a commitment to political sacrifice, compromise and vigilance, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday as she visited a Belfast torn by rising sectarian passions and death threats.

Clinton stood shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of Northern Ireland's five-year-old unity government to denounce this week's violence and intimidation fueled by arguments over flying the British flag.

"Peace does take sacrifice and compromise and vigilance, day after day. We've seen that again this week, that the work is not complete, because we have seen violence break out again," said Clinton, flanked by First Minister Peter Robinson, a British Protestant, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, an Irish Catholic and former Irish Republican Army commander.

"All parties need to confront the remaining challenges of sectarian division peacefully and together," she said.

Hours before her arrival, police said they intercepted an attempt by an IRA splinter group to transport a bomb in Northern Ireland's second-largest city, Londonderry, some 80 miles (130 kilometers) to the northwest. A police vehicle rammed the car containing the bomb and arrested four people - three inside the car, one nearby. Police declined to specify the size of the bomb or speculate on a target.

Such IRA die-hards, who are rooted in the toughest Catholic districts, continue to plot attacks in defiance of the mainstream IRA's 2005 decision to renounce violence and disarm following a failed three-decade campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom.

And at the other extreme of Northern Ireland opinion, Protestants opposed to any compromise with the Catholic minority have mounted a series of illegal, violent protests this week against Belfast City Council's vote Monday to stop flying the British flag year-round, a policy in force for the past century.

Much of the Protestant anger has focused on Alliance, a small mixed-religion party that seeks to promote compromise between the two camps. It sided in the vote with Catholic politicians, who wanted the flag completely removed but agreed to let it fly 18 days a year.

Alliance's sole member of the British Parliament, Naomi Long, said police told her not to sleep in her home overnight or to go to her office Friday. The warning followed arson attacks on two Alliance offices Wednesday and a paint-bomb attack on the home of two other Alliance politicians early Thursday. Protestant militants also tried to storm Belfast City Hall on Monday night following the flag vote; 15 policemen and an Associated Press photographer were wounded.

Long, who planned to meet Clinton as part of a multi-party delegation of female politicians, said she wouldn't be forced from her home or work. "I trust to God for my safety and security," she said. "I will not allow this to stop me."

At their joint press conference, Robinson and McGuinness lauded Clinton and her husband for their exceptional two-decade commitment to brokering peace in Northern Ireland, a land of 1.7 million people, and end four decades of conflict that have claimed 3,700 lives.

"We do know that there are people on the extremes of (British) loyalism, and people on the extremes of (Irish) republicanism, who wish to plunge us back to the past. We're going to resist that with every fiber of our being," said McGuinness, a longtime senior figure in the dominant IRA faction, the Provisionals, which killed nearly 1,800 people from its 1969 foundation to its 1997 cease-fire.

He, Robinson and Clinton all condemned the threat to Long.

Police reported more trouble Thursday night in the predominantly Protestant suburb of Glengormley and the town of Ballymena, where Protestants waving British flags and placards denouncing the Alliance Party illegally blocked roads and threw bottles and rocks at police. At least one officer was injured, several vehicles were damaged and four people were arrested on suspicion of riotous behavior.

Clinton also planned to visit Belfast's major new tourist attraction, a 100 million pound ($160 million) dockside center devoted to the Titanic, the ill-fated luxury liner built in Belfast a century ago.

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Shawn Pogatchnik reported from Dublin.

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